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IRMGARD WAGNER Die natürliche Tochter and the Problem of Representation No other GOETHEAN work has given rise to as much critical discord, either in extent or in degree, as Die natürliche Tochter. If there is any consensus at aU it is the somewhat helpless admission of this vast dissension. Renewed interest in the drama over the past fifteen years can be attributed mainly to the reorientation of Germanistik, especially in the Federal Republic, toward social, political, and historical perspectives, and secondly, to the controversy on Weimar Classicism, which led to a reexamination of Goethe's political profile. From this perspective, his only serious play about the French Revolution could not fail to take on new significance.1 Yet the critical dilemma continues unabated, with the difference perhaps that opposition is stated more frankly than in earlier times. When one eminent critic calls another eminent critic inept, when yet a third eminent critic castigates Goethe scholarship in toto for having faUed to recognize the outstanding insights of this work, the reader finds herself in the position to which one critic confesses in face of the controversial drama: baffled.2 According to this critic, the obstacle that stands in the way of understanding (let me use this word to designate, in the most general way, the critic's job) is the drama's language, "a language which muffles, deadens, smooths out, glosses over." It is a functional language spoken by characters who engage in the deception of politics and become its victims, and "Goethe writes that language for them, as the language of their tragic delusion ... yet it is his own language too."3 What has happened to Goethe's language that could account for the problematical status of this drama, in marked contrast to its sister play, 186 GOETHE SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA lphigenie, a play generaUy recognized as a triumph of language in action?4 My investigation into the language of Die natürliche Tochter does not propose a new interpretation of the drama, not another opinion on Goethe's attitude toward the French Revolution or toward the modern world altogether . Instead, I aim to provide a preliminary answer to the question which has bedevilled Goethe criticism for so long: why doesn't this drama work? EventuaUy, I hope to suggest a new perspective under which we might read the drama in a more fruitful way, a way out of the rut traced by its contradictory reception history. Taking a Lacanian perspective on language I shaU first look at language as the place where the subject can produce herself. I shall next turn to dialogic speech, interlocution, where the speech of an other can help the subject emerge. Then I shaU examine language as a symbolic system, i.e. the metaphoric capabUity of the drama. Finally, I shaU ask after language as representation of reality and, as such, foundation of truth and of communication between reader and text.5 I Classicist drama is essentiaUy direct discourse. Here, as in Lacanian psychology , the speaking subject is constituted entirely in language. More precisely, since both drama and psychoanalysis are language in action, a subject must produce herself by means of her own words. A true subject, in the Lacanian sense, is one who can assume aU her utterances and actions, past and present, as hers, who can relate as je to aU of them; someone who can teU a continuous story about herself.6 Continuous is the key word: it excludes ruptures, contradictions, incongruities. Seen in this hght, aU of the main characters in Goethe's drama are problematical. The three active figures —those who together plot and execute the action (Hofmeisterin, Sekretär, WeltgeistUcher)—are constituted by glaring incongruities. The Hofmeisterin, passionately devoted to her princely charge, a truer mother than the birth mother had ever been, is at the same time addicted to the Sekretär. The drama makes explicit the incongruity inherent in the coexistence of these contradictory passions. As the contradiction sharpens into a conflict of loyalties and a crisis of conscience, the Hofmeisterin reflects on the enigma of her nature: "Und bin ich nicht/ Mir auch ein Rätsel, daß ich noch an dir/ Mit...

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